A long time ago, when I was in school, there were subjects I did like better than physics. Or mathematics.

And then, after finishing school, I started studying medieval archaeology. Hey, that's something where you don't need maths or physics for, right? That's what I thought.

This does not hold true, though, if you do heritage conservation as your "side study" course. Because once you go out and start measuring up the building, you need to lay a basic grid to start with. And that basic grid has to be right - so there's maths to calculate the angles and, even more importantly, to calculate the accuracy of your work. (Not accurate enough, you do it again.)

And you don't need physics only if you don't want to do experiments with spindles. (Or other things, probably.) So now I'm reading up on spinning physics for spinning tops and getting tutoring from the Most Patient Husband.

Which proves, again, two points that I did learn some good way back: Physics can be totally fascinating, and there's nothing that won't come in handy somewhere for doing archaeology.

Thank goodness it works again!

Yesterday's stint without the 'Net was not too bad, since I was able to work without the usual distractions. Plus, not reading or answering mails and not blogging did make itself noticeable in the time available for other stuff.

On the other hand, I do rely on the 'Net for some routine things, like checking translations or finding the best English word with the help of online dictionaries (I can type much faster than I can leaf through a paper dictionary) or explanations for stuff that I need to read up on (like, to take one of yesterday's examples, the definition of standard deviation). So I'm guessing that the time loss and the time gain probably even out for me.

And the reason for me to look up standard deviation? I'm working on a final write-up of the spinning experiment results, and trying to find the best way to visualise the different results and connections (or non-connections) to make it all understandable for the non-spinning reader. The article is planned for the conference proceedings of last year's OEGUF conference and might even appear in electronic format - I'm looking forward to see what medium will be chosen!

Unfortunately, I think we consumed the rest of our chocolate yesterday while looking at graphs and fiddling with axis setups (the most patient man of them all and myself). Good chocolate. Good graphs.

And not only have I graphs, I also have visual survey cards of all the spinner's threads. Which you already know from one of the photos I posted a while ago - but now I have them all. And they are all scanned in and available digitally.

And they are huge.


This has already been resized - generously, I might add, because it did not fit into the blog otherwise. It's Spinner C, by the way - our not too experienced spinner who delivered valuable comparison data to the experiment.

After weeks (or what felt like ages, at least), rainy mornings, there is actually blue sky above today. And the weather is supposed to get a bit better during the next days. Whew!

Apart from that, I'm making things like this:


which, in this case, shows the ten thread samples Spinner E spun. E's data points lie in a group underneath the trend line for wraps per 3 cm compared to tex (which compares the weight of thread per metre to its diameter, giving a hint on how tightly spun it is).

And that tells us that E spun a bit looser than most of the other spinners, and did so consistently. Incidentally, E also has a quite "flat" spinning angle, flatter than most of the other spinners. Which perfectly fits together with soft, fluffy threads.

Contrary to what I planned, I did some entirely different things yesterday, which was a very nice break from winding white thread onto black cardboard - instead, I tried to do some analysing; and the evening was spent partly spinning for the Hallstatt project, with net gain of about 0.7 g thread - very good outcome for the spinning time, which was 20 minutes short of two hours.

And today is another day to relax my eyes from staring at threads and reading out spinning angles, since I have several errands to run and things to do out of house. And I'm hoping that it will be so relaxing that all the rest of reading out spinning angles will go just like a breeze! (And if one of you has any tips or tricks for that... do me a favour and tell them to me.)

Now at last the finish line is in sight - if things go smoothly today, the Forum Experiment analysis (the hands-on part of it, that is) will get finished.

I'm already looking forward to squeezing results out of all that data. A few steps of the documentation are still left to do, though - like scanning all the visual survey cards so that they are available for presentations and easy on-screen comparison, and reading out the spinning angle on most of the samples, but the worst and most time-consuming part will be dealt with. And in good time, since I will do a presentation of the results at Textile Forum.

In other news: Some of you might remember Hartenstein and the two knights for the exhibition there. There's something more for that museum in the air... and I'm already looking forward to lots of fun and a heap of work. Stay tuned to read more about it once details are emerging from the project!

...when I'm happy to have mostly desk-based work. We spent a good part of the weekend helping a friend of ours with his move, and a lot of stuff (some of that heavy) to be carried down from a fourth-floor apartment with no elevator got me a generous measure of muscle ache.

In addition to moving help, we actually got around to take care of some odds and ends here, my current-sock-in-progress has grown a bit, and I have whittled a second thick and bulky spindle stick. I'm already very, very curious to see how that one will work for me... but for now, I'm happily settled on my chair at my desk and set to get some more info out of the spinning experiment yarns.

That said, here is a demo picture of one of the spinner's threads:

You can click it to make it huge. Top row is all Merino, bottom row is all Bergschaf, and the columns are one spindle each, so you can see how the spindles and fibres compare. And even from this small preview, you can see that there is more thick-and-thin in the Bergschaf than in the Merino - which is probably at least partly due to the preparation of the fibre as batt.

Now I only have to get the rest of the threads treated similarly and then laid out in that way and do such a photo of them all... or can somebody please find Experimental Archaeology Brownies to help with that?